Medical missionary to speak at UNMC on Thursday

Richard S. Bransford, M.D.

Richard S. Bransford, M.D., a global health physician and missionary, has spent almost three decades as a surgeon in medical outposts in some of the world’s poorest regions. Today, his reputation and achievements rank him on par with some of history’s great medical missionaries, including Albert Schweitzer and Tom Dooley.

Dr. Bransford, who served four of his five-year surgical residency in UNMC’s Department of Surgery, will speak to campus students, faculty and staff in a special presentation Thursday, Oct. 5, from noon to 1 p.m. in Wittson Hall Amphitheater, 42nd and Dewey streets.

Dr. Bransford’s appearance on campus is sponsored by UNMC’s Student Alliance for Global Health, an organization that educates medical and health science students on global health issues and encourages participation in a number of overseas medical service opportunities. One of SAGH’s members, Jeremiah Ladd, a fourth-year medical student, spent two months last summer on a clinical rotation with Dr. Bransford at the Bethany Crippled Children’s Centre in Kijabe, Kenya.

“Dr. Bransford’s services as a missionary doctor are truly amazing,” Ladd said. “He might be considered a jack of all trades, but if he is, it’s expertise ranging from general surgery and orthopedics to pediatric neurosurgery. He’s coming to Omaha to speak with SAGH and other student groups, faculty and the general public. It is a real honor to have him visit our campus.”

Dr. Bransford’s presentation is titled, “Change: My Thirty Years as a Missionary Surgeon in Africa.” His extraordinary experience of three decades on the medical frontlines of Africa, all of it poverty-stricken and much of it war-torn, gives Dr. Bransford a unique perspective medical reality for millions of people.

In a 1997 letter to the editor of Johns Hopkins magazine, Dr. Bransford articulated the difficulty that millions of Africans have in finding a safe haven. He wrote:

“I finished medical school at Hopkins in 1967 and have lived in Kenya since 1977. I have worked for short periods of time in Somalia, Southern Sudan, Rwanda and some Somali refugee camps within Kenya. Refugees and those in the midst of long-term civil strife are truly desperate people. Often the entire fabric of their society has broken down. This has a direct impact on my work with disabled children in that the basics of health care disappear, inviting increasing numbers of children with diarrhea, cerebral palsy, polio, measles, whooping cough, and similar preventable diseases. I, too, wish that the world was more aware of the real ‘cost’ of war and civil strife.”

Dr. Bransford received his bachelor’s of arts degree in physics from the University of California-Los Angeles in 1962. He received his doctor of medicine degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1967. He served a mixed surgical internship and the first year of his general surgical residency at West Virginia University Medical Center from 1967-1969, then completed his second through fifth years of his residency at UNMC from 1969-1972. In his fifth year at UNMC, Dr. Bransford was senior surgery resident.

His career, while mostly centered on Africa, includes receiving a diploma in tropical medicine from the Prince Leopold School of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium, and two years in the U.S. Air Force.

Dr. Bransford’s work in Africa began in 1976 as a missionary surgeon at the Centre Medical Evangelique in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He then served as chief of surgery and obstetrics-gynecology in the Comoro Islands before his appointment as surgeon and rehabilitation surgeon at Kijabe Hospital in Kenya in 1978.

Dr. Bransford founded the Bethany Crippled Children’s Centre (BCCC) in January 1998 and served as medical director and rehabilitation pediatric surgeon at this institution until 2004. BCCC is a 36-bed facility with a pediatric ward and operating room. The medical staff treats children with burn contractures, hydrocephalus, spina bifida, cleft lie and palates, club feet, polio, scoliosis, hypospadias, cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophies. Working in conjunction with its primary sponsoring agency, Bethany Relief and Rehabilitation International, the staff also is helping train refugees who are orthopedic technicians in the construction of simple braces; training nurses in pediatric skills and developing mobile health clinics throughout Kenya.

Today, Dr. Bransford remains the program director and rehabilitation surgeon at the Bethany Crippled Children’s Centre, as well as consultant and rehabilitation surgeon at two major refugee camps in East Africa.

He has been married to Mildred Babb Bransford for 41 years and has seven children.